my eyes deceive

I'm sure this dev meant well and didn't have any kind of malintent when making this, but when I see people praising this game to no end as some super deep and moving thing, I think of that Family Guy clip where Lois just says "9/11 was bad" and the audience cheers. This game isn't saying anything we haven't heard a hundred times before. Its literally just "child abuse is bad", but pretends like what it's saying is some kind of earth-shattering commentary. The only reason I can give to play this is to learn how NOT to write a message into a game. Its so preachy and pretentious that it has a whole wall of text at the end basically explaining the point to you. This game sucks. also i was abused as a kid too so any of the game's defenders can't use the "youre just an insensitive prick that doesn't know what its like!" defence on me :3

I'd like to state that there is real talent and effort put into this game. However, certain creative choices are highly insensitive and made me wonder why anyone would think this is a good idea in the first place. [h2] The Positives [/h2] This short experience really excels in creating tension and dictating how the player should feel in a certain moment, showing critical knowledge of what makes horror work. Whether it be subtle details like alternating the usage of "Papa" and "Father" to represent a loss of childhood innocence, or having the child take care of plants to represent how she would have to take care of another living being despite her age (not sure if this is intentional), this all shows that deliberate efforts were made to create a real psychological horror experience. But with additional context, the game's flaws really shine. [h2] The Overwhelming Negatives [/h2] This story bears heavy resemblance to the Fritzl case, where Josef Fritzl had held his daughter, Elisabeth Fritzel, captive for 24 years. The layout of the "dungeon" as well as the pregnancies are simply borrowed from this tragedy, which feels EXTREMELY insensitive to the REAL victims of this case, as well as any other victims of CSA. Using a real person's trauma to create a game that just retells their story with a fresh coat of pixelated paint seems disrespectful, intentional or not. Nothing about "my eyes deceive" attempts to properly confront the healing process, rather it opts to deploy shock value to tell a dramatic story, and shies away from actually engaging with any sort of complex narrative that one would assume from a topic this heavy. The climax of the story simply ends by dropping a fairly obvious bombshell you could see coming a mile away, and conveniently ends right there with no attempt to even make an actual statement on sexual abuse. It's almost voyeuristic in a sense where it simply states "bad things happened", and expects the VHS filter and generic gameplay to allow the audience to feign ignorance to the sheer lack of effort into making a game that actually attempts to discuss CSA, rather than relying on its infamy to create an empty emotional crescendo. It almost begs the question; What sane person would see one of the most disturbing criminal cases in modern history and decide to recreate it in a video game format?? When this is an event that actually affected real people???? [h2] Conclusion [/h2] All in all, this gameplay loop has been done to death and is truly nothing to write home about. It's obvious that the creator(s?) had simply thought of making a game that makes you uncomfortable, but didn't think about much beyond that. This game reeks of poor taste, and I really hope that in future endeavours, they try to handle such subjects delicately and attempt to actually discuss recovery, rather than tacking on a message about recovery in the credits that simply wasn't present in any part of the game.